Label to know: Bode
emily bode doesn’t mind if you rip or spill something on her designs. In fact, she likes to see it. ‘You shouldn’t be scared to wear your clothes,’ she says, adding that just as when people keep heirloom jewellery stowed away or save their china for best, ‘there’s no point to it if you don’t use it’.
‘Bode is quite pragmatic in what it is. It’s clothing made from antique textiles, made to be worn,’ says the designer, who established her namesake brand in 2016 and who was the first female designer to show at New York Fashion Week: Men’s (despite being a menswear brand, women also love it). In Emily’s world, idiosyncrasies, flaws and quirks aren’t just part of the charm – they’re essential to the story.
Storytelling is something Emily’s always been drawn to. Growing up in Atlanta she would fastidiously scour the city’s antique fairs and stores. ‘I loved finding that one thing and getting that oral history behind it,’ she says. ‘Then you take on that narrative, it’s your obligation to keep the story going. I didn’t have the same drive when I would buy contemporary clothing. It was hard for me to fall in love with something that wasn’t vintage or antique.’
She always wanted Bode to have the same ‘emotional quality’ as vintage. Today, you can see her magpie instincts brought to life in her clothes, be it the signature patchwork jackets crafted from antique quilts, raincoats embedded with pennies sourced on ebay, or shirts magicked from centuriesold tablecloths. There is something touching, humble even, about Emily’s designs (she learned to sew in the third grade), you can see the human hand in them and her love of craft.
So how does someone with a love of the past manage to thrive in the chasing-thenew world of fashion? By doing things her own way. Starting out, she invested in her own manufacturing studio and is passionate about preserving historical craft techniques. She refuses to buy into obvious trends – her goal is that if you saw a black and white photo of someone wearing Bode you wouldn’t be able to tell when it was taken – and fiercely rejects a more, more, more mentality (many pieces are one-offs). The brand is intrinsically sustainable in its ethos.
Decamping from New York to her fiancé’s parents’ home on Vancouver Island during lockdown, Emily set up an ecommerce site from their greenhouse, battling the terrible reception to upload pictures from her iphone. The cabinet of curiosities feel – trousers fashioned from bedspreads hung up next to plant pots – seem a world away from the sterile shopping sites that flood the internet.
Not kowtowing to the ‘rules’ of fashion (which, let’s face it, have been exposed as clunky, at best, in 2020) hasn’t held her back. She has the A-list fans (Harry Styles is a major stan), and won the CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year Award in 2019. This February, she also scooped Woolmark’s Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation for her A/W ’20 collection. Collaborating with Woolmark, Emily worked with historical mills. Tailoring is fashioned from reclaimed equine blankets, housecoats composed of crocheted merino fleurettes and playful renditions of souvenir jackets feature appliquéd sheep.
Accolades and awards matter, but Emily’s ambitions remain true to their origins. ‘I want people to get use out of fabrics that would otherwise be discarded. I want people to cherish them. I want people to wear Bode and understand the lifecycle of clothing and want to invest in expanding the longevity of their clothes’. Like the brand, it’s a timeless message – but a pertinent one for now.